


To Find a Home

by chasingforeverandaday



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, post-dinner party from hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingforeverandaday/pseuds/chasingforeverandaday
Summary: In which Oscar reminds his friends that life doesn't have to end with death, and our favorite ghost almost gets herself banished to the netherworld.





	To Find a Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the-piece-of-toast over on tumblr in honor of the Poe Party Secret Santa. Hope you enjoy it, and happy holidays everyone!

After that disaster of a dinner party, life and afterlife at Poe’s house had initially returned to a state of normality. Well, what Edgar and Lenore would have called their state of normality. Edgar hid in his study all day, writing poems of ravens and of Annabel’s eyes. Lenore experimented with the vodka left behind by Dostoevsky, playing bartender for none but herself. It was quiet, almost like the kind of simple quiet they had both relished in the past, for it meant they did not have to see each other. But it felt like something was missing, a piece of the puzzle that they hadn’t noticed before was now gone. And then a fabulous tornado blew back into their house to turn everything upside down in the best possible way.

It was dark and quiet and altogether far too still in the library. The abrupt slam of the front door startled Lenore, who had been lounging there, reading an incredibly bizarre novel involving time travel as she sipped a martini. Dropping the book, she reached for one of the knives she and Edgar had hidden all around the house after, well, everything (one can never be too careful). Once she could hear who was rambling loudly in the front hall, she relaxed back into her chair. “Edgaaaaar! Stop brooding and get down here! Where’s Lenore? Lenore, get your frilly little butt- ah, there you are.” The door opened and Lenore saw a velvet frock coat entire the room. The wearer took in the ghost draped across the chair and the book on the floor, and his eyes lit up. “Ooooh, which of my works are you reading? I’m rather partial to The Importance of Being Earnest myself, but really, they’re all spectacular. So which is it?”

She grinned at him, feeling the notion to tease someone for the first time in months. “Well, none of them, of course.”

“Blasphemy!”

“Like you could talk, when was the last time you-”

She was cut off as Edgar rushed in, panting and wielding a fire poker like a sword. “Who is it? Where are they? Lenore, what’s going on?”

Raising one eyebrow, Oscar’s lips twitched into a sly smile as he turned around. “Edgar, darling, we really need to work on your sense of style. Or rather, find you one.”

“Oscar, what are you doing here?” Exasperated, Edgar turned around to leave before being forcefully pulled by the back of his waistcoat by Oscar.

“Oh no, you can’t leave. I’m about to change your lives.” Lenore cocked her head and gestured at herself. “Okay, Edgar’s life and your afterlife of course, Lenore. Because while you two have been sitting here moping, I’ve come up with a plan!”

“To do what?” Tentatively, Edgar let a bit of interest seep into his voice.

“Oh you’ll see.” Smirking, he pranced out in the direction of the kitchen. “Come along now my brooding little friends, this is definitely a discussion that will require alcohol.” Looking at each other, Edgar and Lenore could only shrug and follow, as neither could deny that the spark of life, of hope that Oscar had brought was striking their curiosity.

* * *

Slamming a hand down on the table, Lenore stared into the beady eyes hidden behind a gauzy veil. Huffing, she started again. “Look lady, I want my best friend back, and she’s unfortunately dead, so I need your help to do that. Her name is Annabel Lee, she was strangled eight months ago.”

Looking around Lenore, the medium tried to gain the attention of the men hiding at the entrance to her stall. “Sir, I don’t just raise spirits, I can also get rid of them.” Looking an irate Lenore up and down, she added, “This one I’ll banish for a reduced charge, she’s really quite annoying. How long has she been haunting you precisely?”

Summoning all of her inner strength, Lenore reached across and grabbed the chin of the woman, forcing them face to face. “Hey no, don’t look at Edgar, I’m the one talking to you here. I don’t need to be banished, I have an afterlife I am very much enjoying, thank you very much, it would just be like so much better if it had Annabel in it. It’s not like I don’t know how to help her, I mean, hello, I’m already a ghost! Now, hang on, I am not done talking here...”

A few steps away, her far more lively allies were watching the spectacle with wide eyes. “She does realize we do actually need this woman’s help right? I mean, I don’t know how to raise a ghost, otherwise I’d have brought Mary Anne back forever ago. You obviously don’t know how. And we’re trying to rise quite a few,” Oscar muttered under his breath.

Amused at someone else finally being on the sharp end of Lenore’s tongue, Edgar held up his hands in surrender. “Eh, it’s Lenore, she feels better when she can argue with someone. And besides, have you ever seen her not get her way?”

“True, it’s rather terrifying really.” As Lenore and the medium finally started bartering pricing and services, Oscar began calculating the odds of walking out of here with an empty purse, which were unfortunately high, but expected considering Lenore’s antagonism of their only lead. “Why did we let her talk to the psychic again?”

“We lost rock-paper-scissors, which was truly a terrible way of determining this now that I think about it.”

“Oops.”

* * *

It may have taken a few weeks to gather all the items needed to perform a summoning of this magnitude, but they did it. Everyone who had died that night came back, with the exceptions of HG and Eddie-Eduardo-whatever his name was. No one quite knew why HG didn’t return right away, but the mystery quickly became irrelevant when he popped up in a puff of smoke. Not really knowing what to do with themselves, all the ghosts returned to their previous homes, but everyone drifted back to the old house in the woods over time.

In the beginning, Lenore had to give the rest of them a crash course in ghosting. There were only so many times falling through the floor or accidentally dropping a glass mid-sip was funny. Shelley fell into haunting the halls as a spirit unnaturally quickly, but Lenore was going to write that off as her innate creepiness coming to the forefront. It took Annabel a while to embrace the spookiness, but she tended to stay with Edgar most of the time anyways. Learning how to properly haunt someone never quite reached the top of her to do list. Mary Anne took to projecting herself in the paintings hung throughout the halls. She referred to it as poetic justice and loved scaring the crap out of Ernest whenever he came over to attempt wooing Annabel again. Louisa generally stayed outside in the greenhouse and the trees, frolicking like the nature spirit she had always wished to be.

The creaky old house finally felt like a home. It was typically filled with the constant arguments of its inhabitants (Edgar and Lenore) (or Ernest) (or Oscar) (they all argued quite a bit, let’s be honest), the cawing of attention and treat seeking ravens, muffled explosions from the basement, and an assortment of other strange noises that had melded into a comfortable cacophony that meant all was well. Their friends (and yes, Edgar could actually call them his friends now) were constantly coming and going, both those alive and dead. Life (and afterlife) was good.


End file.
